The Benefits of Using Acrylic LED Signs for Your Business
Acrylic is available in many different colours, thicknesses and opacities- making it a brilliant and versatile product for use in the sign industry. Providing an alternative option to traditional neon signs, they can be lit from all sides, or face only. Offering the same range of options as traditional neon, acrylic LED signs are just as effective and easy to create. The many benefits that acrylic provides means it is a popular option for business signage. In this section, you’ll find out everything you need to know about acrylic neon signs and their benefits.
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What are the Benefits of Acrylic Neon Signs?
More Cost-Effective than Traditional Neon
What Type of Signs Can Acrylic be Used For?
How are LED Block Acrylic Signs Made?
Is there a Minimum or Maximum Size for Block Acrylic Letters?
What are Acrylic Neon Signs?
Traditional neon signs are designed from soft lead glass, pure-iron electrodes. In order to create a lightweight, shatter-resistant alternative, acrylic LED signs are designed from a thermoplastic acrylic known as Altaglus or Perspex. Clear acrylic is now widely used in the manufacture of faux neon, usually in its opal format. Opal acrylic is used so often as it allows light to diffract through the material, achieving a more even illumination when using LEDS. Faux neon also uses low voltage LEDs to recreate the appearance of neon lighting.
Maximum Light Diffraction
Often used as a substitute to glass, acrylic is optically clear and provides a “glass effect”. Acrylic neon signs also offer highly effective light diffraction, allowing your business to make a bold statement and gain attention. The range of light transmission through the opal sheet receives maximum haze and subsequently offers the maximum light diffraction. This in turn, creates the desired lighting.
Improved Safety
It is not only the physical appearance of acrylic neon signs that make them a great choice for your business signage. There are many factors which make acrylic neon signs a safer, more efficient option than traditional glass neon signs. Acrylic is lighter and stronger than glass and if broken, will not shatter into small pieces as glass does. As they are designed with acrylic neon tubing, they are also more robust. Acrylic LED signs are also a safe-to-touch alternative to fragile traditional neon lighting. There is little worry that the sign will break in transit when packed correctly. When dealing with glass on the other hand, breakage is always a worry.
More Cost-Effective than Traditional Neon
Acrylic neon signs are also significantly less expensive to run. The signs provide 80% reduced running costs in comparison to traditional neon. With the addition of thermally managed LEDS, the faux neon system runs cool to the touch. This makes the signage ideal for low level installation.
An acrylic LED product that is particularly cost-effective in providing light is the NP Tube. These tubes can make a huge impact individually, as well as in a group. You can also achieve animated effects over numerous tubes a collective, or a single tube. This product provides an effective and low-cost way to fill your window and provide light.
Block acrylic lettering, brand slogans and unique images are popular signs that can be made from acrylic. Applications in which opal acrylic is used within the sign industry include light boxes and built up letters. Acrylic is also commonly used for bespoke POS displays, due its ability to stand out to customers. Whilst acrylic LED signs can be used for many applications, they are most popular in bars, restaurants and retail due to their eye-catching nature and their ability to create mood lighting.
Acrylic LED Sign Designed Representing a Brand’s Signature Logo
A unique image made with acrylic to showcase a brand’s personality
Acrylic LED sign featuring unique lettering
Neon LED signs can be placed both indoors and outdoors. Indoor signs are often instructional, and can enhance your customer’s experience whilst providing useful guidance. Outdoor signs are a good opportunity to let your customers know when you are open or show your brand’s personality by displaying a phrase or slogan.
An indoor Acrylic LED sign designed to enhance customers’ experience
An outdoor Acrylic LED sign designed to attract customers
For more information, you can read our guide to indoor and outdoor LED neon signs.
There is almost a limitless choice of colours for LED neon signs. You can ensure you get the design you need by creating a custom neon sign. This allows you to specify size, colour, style and layout and the type of backboard or mounting. A custom neon sign means you can create a personalised design that suits your business needs. You can read more about creating a custom neon sign in our guide.
For faux neon and acrylic block letters and shapes, a CNC router is used to cut the desired shape from the acrylic. This is then milled, or hollowed out, to create a channel which will house the LEDs. Often the acrylic is then rounded on the face to replicate the look of traditional neon tubes, however, it can be left as a square edge if desired.
The letters or shapes are then either powder coated on the outside or have self-adhesive vinyl applied to the outer edge in the colour specified by the customer. This helps to reduce LED spotting. After this stage, the LEDs are fit along the inside edge and either opal acrylic or aluminium backs are fit to close off the back of the shape which protects the LEDs. Fixings are also added the customer’s specification. The sign can either be fit directly to a wall or other surface as it is now or, as it often is, be fixed to an acrylic panel or inside a clear acrylic box. Once the sign has been tested over a number of hours, it is then ready to dispatch. We keep all of the offcuts of acrylic and collect them to be recycled.
The minimum and maximums depend on which style is needed. Although we usually say a minimum of 50mm high for individual letters and a maximum doesn’t really exist as multiple sections of NP can be used to make up a full sign letter or shape. Our minimum stroke widths are 10mm and our maximum is 70mm (although we can produce wider stroke width, it leads to some shadowing on the face of the letter or shape).
We offer the safest, most robust and highest quality alternative to real neon. You can view our complete range of Acrylic LED products here.
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